


Ambition cannot find him

by middlemarch



Category: Downton Abbey, Foyle's War, Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Genre: Army buddies, Crossover, Double Crossover, Gen, Humor, Male-Female Friendship, Marriage, Post-Canon, and sort of a double cross, by the Foyle men, cocktails
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 11:21:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11645538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: She occasionally missed the War in odd ways. For instance, she would have be thrilled to be in uniform just now.





	Ambition cannot find him

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kivrin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kivrin/gifts).



“Cut from the same cloth, you both are, and no mistake!” Sam exclaimed, finding herself with her hands on her hips and hearing how her voice was raised. Her mother would say she sounded like a fishwife, a shrill harpy, and perhaps she did, but she found she couldn’t be bothered about that when she was faced, once again, with an unexpected encounter with the aristocracy.

“Sam?” Andrew said as he shifted on the silk upholstered settee so that the sunlight hit his hair, finding all the gold and some of the silver. He crossed his feet at the ankle and looked as much at ease as her father-in-law did in the classically proportioned drawing room. Christopher Foyle had only raised an eyebrow at Sam’s outburst and shrugged slightly, an acknowledgment of her declaration and a reminder that Lord Peter was only across the room, mixing up cocktails as if he’d been born to it. Everything about him, from his title to the house itself, a manor really, the unobtrusive staff, even the way he wore his clothes as if he’d picked them out of the church jumble, made it clear he had not been, nor ever would be, a barman. Just the thought would be enough to make him goggle, Sam thought, though she suspected his wife, Lady Peter properly but quick to add _Harriet, oh please do call me that_ , would laugh aloud if she were privy to Sam’s inner monologue. She shook her head a little but it didn’t change anything about the scene or the situation she found herself in.

“Sam?” Andrew repeated.

“You never thought to say your old friend from the RAF was an Earl, did you? No, you just invited him to tea and I served him bloater paste sandwiches and stale biscuits!” Sam hissed, trying to make sure her voice was covered by the tinkle of Lord Peter at work with bottles and jiggers and the glassy rattle of ice.

“George didn’t mind. He said so, he liked it. He’s not one to fuss about his title,” Andrew replied.

“No, nor to explain ‘the old pile’ was the grandest estate in the county, the Crawleys there since the Conquest!” Sam said. If it hadn’t been for Sybbie and her father and the comforting, levelling bitter squabbling of George’s twin sisters, she might have simply blushed her way into oblivion before the weekend was through. “Though it’s nothing to this, Kit! You might have said, you might have explained.”

“Explained?” 

“That the friendly gentleman in the pub, your old Army connection was a Lord! Lord Peter Wimsey from the papers! You might have said what this place, this Talboys would be, I would have changed, done something,” Sam said. She would have made some excuse, finagled a few minutes with her case, fished out her better cardigan or her court shoes, dabbed at her throat with the tiny bottle of French cologne and done something more than run a comb through her tousled hair.

“He’s a Duke, actually,” Foyle said, smiling that half-smile of his that was the closest he got to a grin without winning a game of chess or hooking an enormous trout.

“And I believe you are equal to any occasion, Sam,” he added. She heard the fondness in his tone, the affection and admiration and amusement he took in her and it caused the same reaction it always did, settling her down, double-quick. Andrew occasionally complained about it but she pointed out he got a similar effect by pressing a kiss to the center of her palm, mid-gesticulation or not, and then he did grin, every time and in a way she felt certain was only for her.

“Mrs. Foyle? Won’t you tell me if you think I’ve got it right? Harriet is wont to decry my efforts, but I do think a Martini is always a matter of taste,” Lord Peter said, offering the drink, the olive gleaming in the liquor like a jade netsuke. She suddenly felt she was not a harridan or a misplaced housemaid, but somehow, meeting an old friend and though she felt he’d been a bit over-generous with the vermouth, she couldn’t find it in herself to speak of it. Not then, at least, and not to him.

**Author's Note:**

> Kivrin posted a delightful vignette with Christopher Foyle and Peter Wimsey as former military comrades and I couldn't resist the wonderfulness of it and decided to marry it my my Downton/Foyle's war crossover and put poor Sam through her paces. Fortunately, Harriet is soon to return to the drawing room...
> 
> The title is from Emily Dickinson.
> 
> And by the way, I have decided Sam calls her father-in-law "Kit" as hardly anything else seemed to suit.


End file.
